I assumed at the beginning of this map when I noticed myself and others dropping deathchests that it was just an error with permissions, and would be fixed. I knew that it was a donor perk last map (or at least I thought it was), and I thought something had got messed up in the configs with the update. It doesn't really make sense to have it be so easy to drop a deathchest. All you have to do is have a chest in your inventory, and when you die, you can get your whole town together to go protect your chest. I think the initial purpose was to stimulate more PvP, and I suppose it has done that, but it is more detrimental than helpful, in my opinion.
I do think that it could be modified to be better, though. What if, by default, your deathchest locked for 30 seconds, and in that time, you could buy more lock time for a large sum of money? Say, 1c per second... That would mean to achieve 5 minutes of lock (including the free initial 30 sec), it would cost you 270c (if my math is right). Thus, you wouldn't have to wait 5 minutes for a chest to unlock to find that the guy only had an iron sword (or if you did, it would be a major waste of money on their part). People with a lot of loot could pay to keep it safe a little longer and risk fighting to get it back, but you wouldn't have that irritating wait every single time you killed a guy with a chest. It's just so pointless right now D: